Eric Church
"Stick That In Your Country Song"
Eric Church makes a case for more serious material in country songwriting with the unrestrained new single “Stick That in Your Country Song.”
Opening with an ominous acoustic guitar riff, Church outlines social issues plaguing people in cities like Detroit and Baltimore, along with veterans returning from combat and underpaid teachers. “Stick that in your country song/Take that one to Number One,” he commands, offering up criticism of feel-good material on country radio as his band churns out some pummeling rock & roll. Church turns in a dynamic vocal performance throughout, ranging from a tense whisper in his early verses to a full-blooded scream in the second verse as he begs for someone to “Rock me hard, stop my heart/Blow the speakers out of this car.”
“Stick That in Your Country Song,” penned by Jeffrey Steele and Davis Naish, is the first official preview of Church’s next album, the as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2018’s Desperate Man. Church and a team of writers wrote many of the songs for the project during a retreat in North Carolina.
Praised by the Los Angeles Times as a “forthright truth-teller” in Country music, Eric Church shared earlier this year that new music was coming. Writing and recording in a rural cabin in North Carolina, the current ACM Entertainer of the Year nominee has had his eagerly-anticipated new single hinted and speculated at throughout recent performances on ACM Presents: Our Country (“Never Break Heart”), Stagecouch (“Jenny”) and in a defiant spoken-word recording, “Through My Ray Bans.” With an iHeart world premiere locked for this Thursday, June 25, ahead of its Monday, June 29 add date at Country radio, the new single is now available: “Stick That In Your Country Song.”
Never afraid to speak his truth, Church is celebrated by Esquire as “one of the most singular working artists in any genre.” In “Stick That In Your Country Song,” Church offers a social commentary on the state of the world as he provides a rallying cry for cities from Detroit to Baltimore and people from young military veterans to school teachers, culminating in an emphatic “Stick That In Your Country Song” as each chorus hits. With a lyric video highlighting this poignant message, Church again puts the focus on fans first by offering his Church Choir an exclusive sneak peek at the video this Thursday, June 25 ahead of its wide release on Friday, June 26.
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Over the past year, the country singer has offered up other glimpses of what could be on the new album. In April, he debuted the song “Never Break Heart” as part of the ACM Presents: Our Country special, performed “Jenny” for the Stagecouch livestream, and released a snippet of a song called “Through My Ray-Bans.”
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